Regimental number | 1942 |
Place of birth | Bendigo, Victoria |
School | Brighton Road State School, St Kilda, Victoria |
Religion | Roman Catholic |
Occupation | Labourer |
Address | 10 Victoria Street, South Melbourne, Victoria |
Marital status | Single |
Age at embarkation | 37 |
Next of kin | Sister, Miss Minnie Bright, 10 Victoria Street, South Melbourne, Victoria |
Enlistment date | |
Rank on enlistment | Private |
Unit name | 38th Battalion, 2nd Reinforcement |
AWM Embarkation Roll number | 23/55/2 |
Embarkation details | Unit embarked from Melbourne, Victoria, on board RMS Orontes on |
Rank from Nominal Roll | Private |
Unit from Nominal Roll | 38th Battalion |
Other details from Roll of Honour Circular | Captain Ackroyd (38th Bn): Bright was recommended for the VC. He ran through heavy shell fire, was wounded above the head, struggled on to deliver his message, and dropped dead at the officer's feet. |
Fate | Killed in Action |
Place of death or wounding | Messines, Belgium |
Age at death | 39 |
Age at death from cemetery records | 39 |
Place of burial | No known grave |
Commemoration details | The Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial (Panel 25), Belgium The Menin Gate Memorial (so named because the road led to the town of Menin) was constructed on the site of a gateway in the eastern walls of the old Flemish town of Ypres, Belgium, where hundreds of thousands of allied troops passed on their way to the front, the Ypres salient, the site from April 1915 to the end of the war of some of the fiercest fighting of the war. The Memorial was conceived as a monument to the 350,000 men of the British Empire who fought in the campaign. Inside the arch, on tablets of Portland stone, are inscribed the names of 56,000 men, including 6,178 Australians, who served in the Ypres campaign and who have no known grave. The opening of the Menin Gate Memorial on 24 July 1927 so moved the Australian artist Will Longstaff that he painted 'The Menin Gate at Midnight', which portrays a ghostly army of the dead marching past the Menin Gate. The painting now hangs in the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, at the entrance of which are two medieval stone lions presented to the Memorial by the City of Ypres in 1936. Since the 1930s, with the brief interval of the German occupation in the Second World War, the City of Ypres has conducted a ceremony at the Memorial at dusk each evening to commemorate those who died in the Ypres campaign. |
Panel number, Roll of Honour, Australian War Memorial | 129 |
Miscellaneous information from cemetery records | Parents: John and Mary BRIGHT. Native of Bendigo, Victoria |
Family/military connections | Nephew: 6825 Pte Stanley Frederick John PETERSON, 20th Bn, killed in action, France, 24 May 1918; Uncle: 3009 Pte Bertram Lindsay BRIGHT, 7th Bn, returned to Australia, 24 August 1918; Cousins: Stanley O'NEILL, killed in action, France; J. DACOL, killed in action, France.~ |
Other details |
War service: Western Front Medals: British War Medal, Victory Medal |